Photos

Yesterday, we went big and walked 21.5 miles in about 7.5 hours. This took us from Nichols to Kalona, IA. Not a crazy fast pace ( ~ 3 mph) but after about mile 15 we were really feeling it in our muscles and feet. Luckily, the weather has cooled down lately, so it was around 70 degrees and mostly overcast, which is just about perfect walking weather. This was a welcome change from the 80 and 90 degree days we experienced last week.

When we started out in the morning, we were just planning to go about 17 miles, which would have been plenty. However, we stopped for lunch around mile 12.5, we found our second wind and decided to try for 9 more miles. This would put us at the end of the driveway of the campground where we’re staying. At the end of the day, we had passed through four cities and three counties. Even though we were tired at the end, we powered through, pushed ourselves, and finished strong. And then we went to bed before the sun went down!

While this is not our longest day on record, any day over 20 miles feels pretty significant to us! Here’s to many more!

Hello, everyone! It's been some time, but we're happy to report we've picked back up in Iowa to continue our walk across the country!

Since our last leg of the trip, a lot has changed. Evan wrote a book, and Jade became a software developer. However, throughout this time, one thing remained the same -- our commitment to completing our goal of walking across America. We're so excited to be back at it, pounding the pavement!

We picked up where we left off west of Davenport, IA, and are currently south of Iowa City in a little town called West Liberty, which puts us about a third of the way across Iowa. The trip is a little different this time -- we found ourselves with six weeks of free time this summer, and decided to chip away at the western half of the country. Evan's dad, Dennis, was able to take some time off, and is accompanying us for this leg of the trip. He picks us up at the end of each day and takes us back to camp. This setup enables us to move a bit more quickly, since we don't have to deviate from our westward path to find places to stay.

While it's quite unlikely that we'll finish this summer, we are hoping to make quite a bit of progress across Nebraska, which would set us up nicely to finish the third and final leg of our journey next summer.

If you have friends or family (or even just suggestions for roadside attractions) in the Iowa or Nebraska areas, please let us know! We'd love to meet them (or at least check out that giant ball of yarn) along the way!

We'll post more updates this summer, and you can also follow us on Instagram or Twitter @adventureaccess. We'll be aggregating all of our pictures and posts here.

It's been a while since our last long update when we crossed into Ohio.
We're pleased to report that we've been in two states since then -
across Indiana and now we're in Illinois. That marks 7 out of the total
13 states we'll cross, which feels pretty great!

Speaking of feeling great - or not - we've taken the last few days off
while Jade recovers from Bronchitis. Despite feeling a bit under the
weather, we did take a little trip to Chicago (Evan's first visit,
Jade's second) where we saw a hilarious show at The Second City and
caught up with Evan's college buddy (and backer) Sam. We even had a
chance to tour the Chicago Board of Trade and see the activity on the
trading floor at closing bell - pretty intense stuff!

Did you know that winter is coming? That is what we keep hearing! Not
to worry - we've stocked up on cold weather gear: hats, gloves, coats,
under armor, etc, so we'll be nice and toasty. So far, our coldest
night has been around 40 degrees, and we were very warm in our sleeping
bags. Tomorrow's high is around 60 degrees, which sounds like perfect
walking weather to us!

We have 2 1/2 more states of corn and soybeans to look forward to (the
rest of Illinois, then Iowa and Nebraska) then we'll be in Wyoming,
where we'll have to say goodbye to flat terrain and hello to some
serious inclines, but by that time, we'll probably be ready for a change
of scenery!

A very special thanks to Evan's relatives in Morris, Illinois, who
hosted us and showed us the local sights while Jade recuperated. We were
even featured on the front page of their local paper (check it out
here: http://bit.ly/p6frBi). Jade's feeling better so we were back on the road today and things are great! We're looking forward to crossing the Mississippi River in a couple of days!

We
took a short hiatus to rest up and see our families, but we are back on
the road as of August 16 and we’re now almost halfway across Ohio.
When we walked through where we both grew up, we had some “guest
walkers” join us: Evan’s dad walked with us for a mile and a half,
Jade’s mom rolled with us for a couple miles, and Jade’s aunt Jill
joined us for an entire day - 23 miles! We
even had some local news coverage while we were home. Check out the
newspaper article attached below! We felt a little bit famous as we
traveled through Northwest Pennsylvania and Northeast Ohio, because
people who had seen the news coverage would stop us on the road and want
to chat with us!

As
we mentioned in the last update - we switched from backpacks to a cart,
which has made things much easier. The cart is awesome on flat
stretches, and not too bad on hills either, plus we can take turns
pushing, which gives the other person a break. Having the cart also
makes us much more visible to cars passing by, and one nice family we
met near Middlefield, Ohio (home of the 4th largest Amish settlement, by the way)
even gave us an orange flag that we have attached to our cart for added
visibility.

As
we approach the Toledo area, that means that we are almost 1/4 of the
way across the US!! Can you believe it!? We’re also starting to think
about gear for cooler weather, but for now it's still in the 80s so
we're definitely looking forward to some crisp fall air. We’re also
looking forward to walking through states in the US that we’ve never
been to - Evan has never been between Ohio and California and Jade has
never been between Chicago and California. Between here and Chicago we
have friends and family members along the way who we are very excited to
see! Maybe we will be able to convince them to walk with us for a day
too!

We’ve
uploaded lots of new pictures to our Flickr account, which you can
check out here. We had a bit of a backlog of photos to upload, so
they’re not all in order but they should give you an idea of what we
have been up to!